Ukraine’s ‘servant of the people’ is a

 Western fiction

There are far better ways to support the Ukrainian people

 than glorifying Volodymyr Zelensky

Dimitri Lascaris / July 4, 2022 / CANADIAN DIMENSION

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy walks under a camouflage net in a trench as he visits the war-hit Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, December 6, 2021. Image by manhhai/Flickr.

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From the outset of Russia’s invasion in February of this year, Western elites have bestowed upon Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a level of adulation that few (if any) leaders have enjoyed.

Zelensky’s political rock star tour began with a speech to the European Parliament on March 1. He spoke with the United States Congress on March 16. By April 5, he had spoken to the parliaments of seventeen other nations—all of them closely allied with the United States.

Zelensky’s tour hit a snag on April 8. On that day, Zelensky caused an uproar among Greeks when he shared in Greece’s Parliament a video byte of a neo-Nazi soldier from the notorious Azov Battalion.

That little brouhaha was quickly swept under the Western rug.

Within the first six weeks of the war, Zelensky also addressed NATO, the G7, the European Council and the United Nations Security Council.

Western leaders and corporate media have incessantly described Zelensky as ‘Churchillian’—an epithet that was obviously intended as a compliment, despite Churchill’s well-documented racism.

George W. Bush, a war criminal who has never been held accountable for his crimes, described Zelensky as “the Winston Churchill of our times” after spending “a few minutes” chatting with the Ukrainian entertainer in a videoconference.

Australia’s former Prime Minister Scott Morrison hailed Zelensky as a “lion of democracy.”

French President Emmanuel Macron gushed that Zelensky was the “personification of honour, freedom and courage.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson lauded Zelensky for his “invincible heroism.”

Since ascending to Ukraine’s presidency, what has Volodymyr Zelensky done to merit such lofty praise from such eminent people?

The political ascent of Volodymyr Zelensky

Zelensky first assumed the office of Ukraine’s presidency in May 2019, at the age of 41. Prior to that time, he had never held elected office. As explained by the Wilson Center:
Zelensky came to power in the spring of 2019 with a mandate from 73 percent of voters—rich and poor, urban and rural dwellers, Ukrainian and Russian speakers—across all regions of Ukraine. At the same time, the older generation of Ukrainian politicians, as well as the Western and Eastern political establishments, regarded him with some concern and even suspicion: a humorist and showman with no prior experience in public administration, what Zelensky might do once in office was unpredictable. The new president was not a professional politician, his team included no known diplomats and activists, and his platform was both vague and heavily populist…
Zelensky and his team of “new faces”—politicians of the generation that had grown up during the era of independence and who were not connected to the old ways of getting things done, which too often involved cronyism and deal-making—were tasked by voters to achieve three goals: (1) peace in the Donbas, (2) economic betterment for ordinary Ukrainians, and (3) a noncorrupt and responsive government.

Zelensky’s electoral platform was, to put it mildly, a bit vague: he was so evasive in his campaign that, several days before Ukrainians began to vote, twenty Ukrainian news outlets issued a statement calling on Zelensky to stop avoiding the media.
The presidential comedian

Zelensky pursued a career in comedy from a young age. At 17, he performed a crotch-grabbing dance routine in the KVN comedy competition.

He later earned a law degree from the Kyiv National Economic University, but did not go on to practice law. Instead, he pursued a career in comedy.

Between the completion of his law degree and Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election, Zelensky appeared in numerous Ukrainian movies and starred in Servant of the People, a television series in which Zelensky played the role of Ukraine’s president.

When Zelensky switched from playing Ukraine’s president to being Ukraine’s president, Ukraine was a deeply troubled nation. It was the poorest country in Europe. It was notoriously corrupt. It was embroiled in a civil war in which as many as 13,000 Ukrainians had died. Its government had lost control of large swathes of Ukrainian territory. It was mired in a tense conflict with Russia.

Serving as president of a stable, peaceful and prosperous country is difficult enough. Serving as leader of a nation as troubled as Ukraine is a monumental challenge, and it was a challenge for which Zelensky was spectacularly unqualified.

Zelensky had no experience or formal training in economic management, no experience or formal training in public administration, no experience serving in any elected capacity, and no experience with military command.

If you needed brain surgery, would you hire your gardener to do it? A career comedian was no more qualified to be Ukraine’s president than a gardener would be to perform surgery on your brain. Don’t get me wrong, I respect comedians. For a long time, I’ve admired George Carlin, but I never thought that Carlin was qualified to be president of the United States.
Does life really mimic art?

It’s often said that life mimics art.

In Zelensky’s case, that’s not entirely accurate.

In Servant of the People, Zelensky donned the mantle of an anti-corruption champion, but according to the widely cited Transparency International (TI), corruption levels in Ukraine remained essentially the same in the first two years of Zelensky’s term. On a scale of 0-100 (in which zero equals the highest level of perceived corruption and 100 equals the lowest level of perceived corruption), TI accorded to Ukraine a corruption score of 30 in 2019. In 2021, Ukraine scored 32.

In September 2021, the European Court of Auditors issued a report in which it concluded that “grand corruption was still a key problem in Ukraine.”

In June of this year, a poll funded by the Wall Street Journal found that 85 percent of Ukrainians believe that corruption among Ukraine’s high officials and the wealthy is a “major threat” to Ukraine’s security.

In October of last year, the Pandora Papers revealed that, days before his election, Zelensky himself had been dealing in undisclosed offshore holdings. As reported by the Guardian:
On the campaign trail, Zelenskiy pledged to clean up Ukraine’s oligarch-dominated ruling system. And he railed against politicians such as the wealthy incumbent Petro Poroshenko who hid their assets offshore. The message worked. Zelenskiy won 73% of the vote and now sits in a cavernous office in the capital, Kyiv, decorated with gilded stucco ceilings. Last month, he held talks with Joe Biden in the Oval Office.
The Pandora Papers, leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and shared with the Guardian as part of a global investigation however, suggest Zelenskiy is rather similar to his predecessors.
The leaked documents suggest he had—or has—a previously undisclosed stake in an offshore company, which he appears to have secretly transferred to a friend weeks before winning the presidential vote.
Zelenskiy has not commented on the claim despite extensive attempts by the Guardian and its media partners to reach him. His spokesperson Sergiy Nikiforov messaged: “Won’t be an answer.”
The files reveal Zelenskiy participated in a sprawling network of offshore companies, co-owned with his longtime friends and TV business partners. They include Serhiy Shefir, who produced Zelensky’s hit shows, and Shefir’s older brother, Borys, who wrote the scripts. Another member of the consortium is Ivan Bakanov, a childhood friend. Bakanov was general director of Zelenskiy’s production studio, Kvartal 95.
All are associated with Zelenskiy’s home town in southern Ukraine, Kryvyi Rih. After winning power, Zelenskiy brought these close allies into government. Bakanov became head of Ukraine’s SBU security agency. Zelenskiy made Serhiy Shefir his first assistant, an unpaid role that involves handling the president’s daily schedule. A fourth member of this close-knit group, Andriy Yakovlev, is a film director and Kvartal 95 producer.


The Guardian also noted that, since entering politics, Zelensky had been “dogged by claims he is under the influence of Igor Kolomoisky, a billionaire whose TV channel screened Zelenskiy’s show.”

During the campaign, Zelensky’s opponents alleged $41 million from Kolomoisky entities found its way between 2012 and 2016 into offshore firms belonging to Zelensky and his circle. According to Politico:
Kolomoisky’s media outlet also provides security and logistical backup for the comedian’s campaign, and it has recently emerged that Zelenskiy’s legal counsel, Andrii Bohdan, was the oligarch’s personal lawyer. Investigative journalists have also reported that Zelenskiy traveled 14 times in the past two years to Geneva and Tel Aviv, where Kolomoisky is based in exile.

In 2020, the US Justice Department accused Kolomoisky of stealing billions from a bank he owned and laundering this money all over the world. The next year, the US government imposed sanctions on Kolomoisky in connection with the alleged fraud, although the ‘sanctions’—a travel ban on Kolomoisky and members of his family—were farcical. After all, would Kolomoisky desire to travel to the United States when its government accuses him of having perpetrated a gigantic fraud?

Not only does Kolomoisky stand accused of fraud, he is also one of several Ukrainian oligarchs who have funded the far-right, neo-Nazi-linked Azov Battalion.
A “lion of democracy”?

Under Zelensky, Ukraine’s government has aggressively suppressed free speech and political pluralism.

In early 2021, Zelensky signed a decree banning three ‘pro-Russian’ television channels. According to Germany’s public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, “the channels are considered [in Ukraine] to be pro-Russian messengers anchored in the nation’s war-scarred east as well as its south.”

The Ukrainian Union of Journalists reacted harshly to Zelensky’s ban, stating “the deprivation of access to Ukrainian media for an audience of millions without a court … is an attack on freedom of expression.”

An owner of one of the banned channels was said to be Taras Kozak, a lawmaker and member of the Ukrainian political party, Opposition Platform — For Life (OP-FL). At the time of Zelensky’s channel ban, Kozak’s party was the largest opposition party in the Ukrainian Parliament. Not anymore: Ukraine’s “lion of democracy” banned OP-FL in March of this year, along with ten other ‘pro-Russian’ and left-wing parties.

The eleven political parties banned by Zelensky include the Socialist Party of Ukraine and the libertarian Party of Shariy, which is led by the popular Youtube blogger, Anatoly Shariy.

Zelensky’s government also arrested two youth communist leaders and accused them of conspiring to overthrow the government. Following their arrest, the World Federation of Democratic Youth, a UN-recognized global alliance of progressive youth organizations, stated “After being persecuted, repressed, kidnapped, and tortured by the…Ukrainian Security Service, now their right to defense from the accusations [against them] is being violated.

None of the eleven parties banned by Zelensky is a far-right party. Evidently, Zelensky doesn’t regard Neo-Nazis as a threat to Ukrainian democracy.

This month, a Ukrainian court upheld Zelensky’s ban. It also ruled that OP-FL’s assets will be confiscated by the Ukrainian State Treasury.

Prior to Russia’s invasion, several opinion polls showed OP-FL leading hypothetical parliamentary elections or finishing second. When Russia launched its invasion, OP-FL condemned it.

It is important to understand that, while 78 percent of the people living in Ukraine are ethnically Ukrainian, 17 percent of Ukraine’s population is ethnically Russian. It should surprise no one that ethnically Russian Ukrainians might feel an affinity toward Russia. Does that affinity disentitle these Ukrainian citizens to free speech or political representation? A genuine Ukrainian democracy would not treat ethnic Russians as second-class citizens.

Weeks before the invasion, Zelensky launched an attack on another political opponent, Petro Poroshenko. The “chocolate king” served as Ukraine’s President from 2014 to 2019 and lost to Zelensky in the 2019 election. He is one of Ukraine’s wealthiest men. He acquired his riches by being, in the words of the Financial Times, one of the “quick movers in the post-Soviet years.”

No one can plausibly accuse Poroshenko of being ‘pro-Russian.’ Poroshenko has called Putin a “fascist” and a “pathological liar.” He insists that NATO membership for Ukraine would have shielded Ukraine from Russia. Shortly after Zelensky’s election in 2019, Poroshenko went so far as to join protests against Zelensky’s (supposed) plan to make peace with Russia.

At the beginning of this year, Zelensky’s administration accused Poroshenko of “high treason” for allegedly helping to organize the sale of large amounts of coal from the war-torn eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass in 2014 and 2015. Prosecutors say that these sales helped to finance Russian-backed ‘separatists.’ Zelensky also accused Poroshenko of fleeing Ukraine to avoid arrest.

In January of this year, while out of the country, Poroshenko called the charges “bullshit” and said he would return to Ukraine to face the charges. According to Politico:

Some Western diplomats have expressed dismay that Poroshenko chose to come to Brussels this week and draw attention to Ukraine’s bitter political in-fighting at just the moment that NATO allies were confronting Russia over its huge military build-up along the Ukrainian border.

In the statement, Podolyak [an adviser to Zelensky] said Poroshenko was not above the law and suggested that Ukrainian authorities would resist any external pressure to drop the charges against Poroshenko because that would mean interfering with an independent investigation….

He added, “Unfortunately, Petro Poroshenko simply uses foreign journalists to create pretexts for personal PR in Ukraine and to show in his media that he supposedly has a ‘good press’ and ‘a lot of things to do’ in Europe. One of the basic principles of any democratic state is the equality of all citizens before the law and the courts. We would not want Europe to return to the times when the high political or economic status of a particular person, including the ex-president, puts him above the law and frees him from the need to comply with court orders.”

Despite its lofty, law-and-order rhetoric, Zelensky’s administration folded to foreign pressure like a cheap suit. In February of this year, the Globe and Mail reported that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland both called Zelensky and persuaded him not to arrest and imprison Poroshenko. Since then, and despite the gravity of the charges against him, Poroshenko has remained a free man. He has appeared frequently on Western television to denounce Russia’s invasion and demand more weapons for Ukraine’s devastated military.

What are we to make of Zelensky’s capitulation to foreign pressure? Either the charges against Poroshenko were trumped up for the purposes of neutralizing Zelensky’s primary political opponent, or Zelensky has sacrificed equality before the law, which (to borrow the words of Zelensky’s adviser) is “one of the basic principles of any democratic state.”

Either way, Ukraine’s “high treason” fiasco raises serious questions about Zelensky’s commitment to the rule of law.

Torture and gender-based violence in Ukraine

For many years, Ukraine’s security services have engaged in torture. During Zelensky’s term as President, the use of torture has remained widespread.

In Amnesty International’s annual country report on Ukraine for 2021, Amnesty stated “impunity for torture and other ill-treatment in general remained endemic. Investigations into more recent allegations remained slow and often ineffective.”

With respect to gender-based violence—another chronic human rights issue in Ukraine—Amnesty’s 2021 Ukraine report stated:
Gender-based violence and discrimination—particularly against women—and domestic violence remained widespread. Support services for the survivors as well as legislative and policy measures intended to combat domestic violence, although improved in recent years, remained insufficient. No progress was made in ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on combating and preventing violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention).

Neoliberalism on steroids

In 2019, Zelensky defeated Poroshenko in a landslide, with 73 percent of the popular vote.

By the time of Russia’s invasion in February of this year, Zelensky’s approval rating had plummeted to 31 percent.

In a lengthy, April 2022 interview given to The Grayzone Project, Olga Baysha, a Ukrainian sociologist and academic who authored Democracy, Populism, and Neoliberalism in Ukraine: On the Fringes of the Virtual and the Real, attributed Zelensky’s fall from grace to his fervour for radical neoliberalism. As she explained:
The basic argument presented in my recent book is that the astonishing victory of Zelensky and his party, later transformed into a parliamentary machine to churn out and rubber-stamp neoliberal reforms (in a “turbo regime,” as they called it), cannot be explained apart from the success of his television series, which, as many observers believe, served as Zelensky’s informal election platform. Unlike his official platform, which ran only 1,601 words in length and contained few policy specifics, the 51 half-hour episodes of his show provided Ukrainians with a detailed vision of what should be done so that Ukraine could progress.

The message delivered by Zelensky to Ukrainians through his show is clearly populist. The people of Ukraine are portrayed in it as an unproblematic totality devoid of internal splits, from which only oligarchs and corrupted politicians/officials are excluded. The country becomes healthy only after getting rid of both oligarchs and their puppets. Some of them are imprisoned or flee the country; their property is confiscated without any regard to legality. Later, Zelensky-the-president will do the same towards his political rivals.

Interestingly, the show ignores the theme of the Donbass war, which erupted in 2014, a year before the series started being broadcast. As the Maidan and Russia-Ukraine relations are very divisive issues in Ukrainian society, Zelensky ignored them so as not to jeopardize the unity of his virtual nation, his viewers, and ultimately his voters.

Zelensky’s election promises, made on the fringes of the virtual and the real, were predominantly about Ukraine’s “progress,” understood as “modernization,” “Westernization,” “civilization,” and “normalization.” It is this progressive modernizing discourse that allowed Zelensky to camouflage his plans for neoliberal reforms, launched just three days after the new government came to power. Throughout the campaign, the idea of “progress” highlighted by Zelensky was never linked to privatization, land sales, budget cuts, etc. Only after Zelensky had consolidated his presidential power by establishing full control over the legislative and executive branches of power did he make it clear that the “normalization” and “civilization” of Ukraine meant the privatization of land and state/public property, the deregulation of labor relations, a reduction of power for trade unions, an increase in utility tariffs, and so on.

Zelensky betrayed not only his populist message, but also his promise to pursue peace

To the credit of the Ukrainian people, they elected Zelensky in a landslide due largely to Zelensky’s vow to pursue peaceful relations with Russia, but Zelensky betrayed that promise. How did he do so? Let us count the ways:Like his predecessor Petro Poroshenko, Zelensky failed to implement the Minsk accords, which were designed to end the civil war in Donbas by according to that region political autonomy within Ukraine.
Knowing full well that Ukraine’s admission into NATO was the brightest of red lines for Russia’s government, Zelensky clamoured loudly for NATO membership. His government went so far as to threaten openly to acquire nuclear weapons if Ukraine was not admitted to NATO. Zelensky’s government enthusiastically collaborated with Western powers to render Ukraine a de facto member of NATO. One year into Zelensky’s Presidency, NATO declared Ukraine to be a “partner country.” During Zelensky’s first two years in office, NATO trained at least 10,000 Ukrainian troops annually through classes, drills and exercises. In May 2021, Ukraine and NATO launched “Operation Sea Breeze” (two weeks of massive military exercises in the Black Sea), and did so only six days after Russian armed forced had fired warning shots and dropped four bombs in the path of HMS Defender, a British warship that had provocatively entered the territorial waters off Crimea, claimed by Russia. Less than three months later, Ukraine and numerous NATO states officially started more military exercises in Ukraine under the moniker “Rapid Trident 21,” which featured, for the first time, “battalion tactical exercises of a multinational battalion with combat shooting in a single combat order.” The avowed aim of “Rapid Trident 21” was “to increase combat readiness, defense capabilities and interoperability” between NATO and Ukrainian military forces.

In early 2021, Zelensky’s government adopted a decree which left no ambiguity as to its determination to retake Crimea by military means.

As reported by Jacques Baud, a retired Colonel in Swiss intelligence who served in Ukraine in NATO training operations, artillery shelling of the population of the Donbass increased dramatically (according to daily reports of OSCE observers in the region) in the week prior to Russia’s invasion.

Zelensky worsened strains with Russia by banning ‘pro-Russian’ Ukrainian television stations in 2021.

An honest and comprehensive assessment of Zelensky’s record leads inexorably to the conclusion that, not only did he fail to fulfill his electoral promise of pursuing peace with Russia, but he adopted policies that dramatically increased the risk of military conflict.

Unsurprisingly, a recent poll in Ukraine, funded by the Wall Street Journal, found that 70 percent of respondents believed that the Ukrainian government bears either “some” or a “great deal” of responsibility for the conflict with Russia.

The “lion of democracy” is as fictional as the “servant of the people”

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Western states have expended billions of dollars to prop up Zelensky’s government, both militarily and economically.

By late May, the United States alone had committed a total of US$54 billion to Ukraine, over US$30 billion of which was military-related.

Canada has committed C$1.87 billion to support Zelensky’s government. That sum does not include Canadian military aid. According to Project Ploughshares:
In response to Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, Canada has announced successive shipments of military goods to the Ukrainian government. As of mid-May 2022, the value of all committed transfers was in excess of $150-million, with military aid worth a further $500-million proposed in Canada’s 2022 federal budget. The volume and speed of these government-to-government transfers, conducted by the Department of National Defence (DND), are unprecedented in recent Canadian history.

Britain has committed the equivalent of US$2.8 billion of military aid to Ukraine. Other NATO states have contributed billions more.

Despite NATO’s massive and unprecedented weapons transfers to Ukraine, Ukraine is losing this war badly. Within the past two days, Russian and LPR forces captured Lysychansk, the last major Ukrainian stronghold in Luhansk. Lysychank fell within only one week of the fall of Severodonetsk>.

With every military failure, Zelensky vows to retake cities that have been lost to Russian and separatist forces, but there is little if any reason to believe that Ukraine will be able to do so.

Quite apart from the issue of Ukraine’s inability to defeat Russia, there looms a larger question: is Volodymyr Zelensky the kind of leader who merits Western support?

The fictional Zelensky is a “servant of the people” and a “lion of democracy.”

The real Zelensky is an anti-hero who has degraded whatever democracy existed in Ukraine. Moreover, Zelensky refused or failed to end the use of torture. He instituted a profoundly unpopular program of neoliberalism. He has deep ties to a shady oligarch who funded Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Perhaps worst of all, he betrayed his promise to seek peace with Russia by pursuing policies that greatly heightened the risk of war.

After all that Western governments have done to destabilize Ukraine and to use its people as cannon fodder in a proxy war with Russia, the least that we can do is to support Ukrainians in their hour of desperate need, but there are far better ways to support the Ukrainian people than glorifying and propping up Zelensky.

The West can and should provide direct and robust humanitarian aid to Ukrainians. We should embrace and care for Ukrainian refugees. And, above all, we should work tirelessly to achieve a negotiated resolution to this calamitous war.

Dimitri Lascaris is a lawyer, human rights activist and former candidate for the leadership of the Green Party of Canada. He is based in Montréal. Follow him on Twitter @dimitrilascaris.

Opinion: Zelenskyy is the problem, not his friends

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fired leading security officials in the middle of a war. But the president's public rebuke only obscures the real problem: lack of reform, says Eugen Theise.

MS ZELENSKA DISTRACTED THE

USA WITH HER APPERANCE THERE

The firings of the SBO boss (left) and the prosecutor general (right) has cast 

Zelenskyy in an unflattering light

The firing of SBU intelligence services boss Ivan Bakanov and Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova is akin to a political earthquake in Ukraine. During a war, one would expect maximum solidarity from a government. Such dismissals register as a very public rejection of one's closest confidants.

In a video address on Sunday, the Ukrainian president said he was suspending both heads. His only voiced criticism was that too many officials of both agencies in the south and east of Ukraine had deserted after their regions had been occupied by Russian forces.

Maybe war has forced Volodymyr Zelenskyy to change his approach to politics after surrounding himself mainly with friends and former business partners? Hardly. His actions only look decisive on the surface.

DW author Eugen Theise is a native of Ukraine

At first, there was only talk of suspension, not firing. The office of the president later announced that it wanted to investigate treason in both cases. Then the situation suddenly snowballed: On Tuesday, parliament dismissed both Bakanov and Venediktova at Zelenskyy's behest. There was no longer any talk of the investigations announced the day before.

This strange personnel gamble gives the impression that the former comedian and actor — who, after the Russian invasion of his country, was transformed into the courageous leader of a brave nation before the eyes of the world — has suddenly dwarfed himself. At a time, moreover, when he should have stepped up and taken responsibility for the mistakes of his confidants.

A general's treason

Known cases of treason and desertion in the ranks of intelligences services occurred within the first weeks of the war. But the president needed months to find an effective way to publicly address the situation. Perhaps the most sensational example is the case of General Andriy Naumov of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), who fled Ukraine on February 23, one day before the Russian invasion.

Naumov was Bakanov's right hand at the SBU. In just a few short months, Naumov's patron had promoted him to intelligence services general. As director of Ukraine's domestic security headquarters, it would have been his task to sniff out corruption or moles. Naumov's flight was reason enough to immediately fire Bakanov.

The farce surrounding the firing of Zelenskyy's closest confidants comes at the worst possible time

Zelenskyy's obfuscation

Bakanov is not really the problem though, Zelenskyy — who appointed him head of the SBU — is the problem. But Bakanov happens to be Zelenskyy's best friend. The two have known each other since kindergarten. They studied at university together and later became show business partners. The only reason for Bakanov's appointment is Zelenskyy's thirst for power and the desire to control the SBU by appointing a close friend to run it. Rather than admitting that the appointment was a mistake, the president instead tried to create a diversion by announcing Bakanov's suspension.

The fact of the matter is that both men bear responsibility for not cleaning house at SBU — which never enjoyed a good reputation in Ukraine — before the Russian invasion. For the fact that corruption, and now treason, are still the order of the day. The back-and-forth on this issue doesn't instill much confidence that the president has reflected upon his own mistakes. It was never a good idea to appoint someone to a key position in the security apparatus, simply because he had known him all his life.

Enough foot-dragging on reforms

There is a lot to suggest that the firings were carried out with the consent of Western partners. Zelenskyy not only criticized Bakanov and Venediktova in his video address, but also called for the quick appointment of an anti-corruption prosecutor.     

G7 ambassadors have repeatedly criticized the fact that Ukraine's election oversight commission has done nothing for two years. So far, the president has largely ignored Western demands for action. Just as he has ignored criticism over Kyiv's lack of political will when it comes to finally wrapping up the glacial reform of Ukraine's bloated and scandal-ridden intelligence services.

But now, Zelenskyy can no longer ignore criticism from his Western partners, as he was able to do before the war. Without guns and money from the EU and the US, Ukraine would have gone broke long ago and would scarcely be able to resist Russia's onslaught. The reforms that are so essential for the strengthening of the Ukrainian state will now have to be implemented in the middle of a war. For this, the most experienced professionals are crucial, and not the president's kindergarten pals.

This commentary was translated from German by Jon Shelton    

Ukraine graft concerns resurface as

Russia war goes on

By MATTHEW LEE and NOMAAN MERCHANT

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office on July 8, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, attends a meeting with military officials during his visit the war-hit Dnipropetrovsk region. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s dismissal of senior officials is casting an inconvenient light on an issue that the Biden administration has largely ignored since the outbreak of war with Russia: Ukraine’s history of rampant corruption and shaky governance.

As it presses ahead with providing tens of billions of dollars in military, economic and direct financial support aid to Ukraine and encourages its allies to do the same, the Biden administration is now once again grappling with longstanding worries about Ukraine’s suitability as a recipient of massive infusions of American aid.

Those issues, which date back decades and were not an insignificant part of former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, had been largely pushed to the back burner in the immediate run-up to Russia’s invasion and during the first months of the conflict as the U.S. and its partners rallied to Ukraine’s defense.

But Zelenskyy’s weekend firings of his top prosecutor, intelligence chief and other senior officials have resurfaced those concerns and may have inadvertently given fresh attention to allegations of high-level corruption in Kyiv made by one outspoken U.S. lawmaker.

It’s a delicate issue for the Biden administration. With billions in aid flowing to Ukraine, the White House continues to make the case for supporting Zelenskyy’s government to an American public increasingly focused on domestic issues like high gas prices and inflation. High-profile supporters of Ukraine in both parties also want to avoid a backlash that could make it more difficult to pass future aid packages.

U.S. officials are quick to say that Zelenskyy is well within his right to appoint whomever he wants to senior positions, including the prosecutor general, and remove anyone who he sees as collaborating with Russia.

Yet even as Russian troops were massing near the Ukrainian border last fall, the Biden administration was pushing Zelenskyy to do more to act on corruption — a perennial U.S. demand going back to Ukraine’s early days of independence.

“In all of our relationships, and including in this relationship, we invest not in personalities; we invest in institutions, and, of course, President Zelenskyy has spoken to his rationale for making these personnel shifts,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters on Monday.

Price declined to comment further on Zelenskyy’s reasoning for the dismissals or address the specifics but said there was no question that Russia has been trying to interfere in Ukraine.

“Moscow has long sought to subvert, to destabilize the Ukrainian government,” Price said. “Ever since Ukraine chose the path of democracy and a Western orientation this has been something that Moscow has sought to subvert.”

Still, in October and then again in December 2021, as the U.S. and others were warning of the increasing potential for a Russian invasion, the Biden administration was calling out Zelenskyy’s government for inaction on corruption that had little or nothing to do with Russia.

“The EU and the US are greatly disappointed by unexplained and unjustifiable delays in the selection of the Head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Office, a crucial body in the fight against high-level corruption,” the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv said on Oct. 9.

“We urge the selection commission to resume its work without further delays. Failure to move forward in the selection process undermines the work of anti-corruption agencies, established by Ukraine and its international partners,” it said. That special prosecutor was finally chosen in late December but was never actually appointed to the position. Although there are indications the appointment will happen soon, the dismissal of the prosecutor general could complicate the matter.

The administration and high-profile lawmakers have avoided public criticism of Ukraine since Russia invaded in February. The U.S. has ramped up the weapons and intelligence it’s providing to Ukraine despite early concerns about Russia’s penetration of the Ukrainian government and existing concerns about corruption.

A Ukrainian-born congresswoman who came to prominence early in the war recently broke that unofficial silence.

Rep. Victoria Spartz, a first-term Republican from Indiana, has made half a dozen visits to Ukraine since the war began. And she was invited to the White House in May and received a pen used by President Joe Biden to sign an aid package for Ukraine even after she angrily criticized Biden for not doing more to help.

But in recent weeks, Spartz has accused Zelenskyy of “playing politics” and alleged his top aide Andriy Yermak had sabotaged Ukraine’s defense against Russia.

She’s also repeatedly called on Ukraine to name the anti-corruption prosecutor, blaming Yermak for the delay.

Ukrainian officials have hit back. A statement from Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry accused Spartz of spreading “Russian propaganda” and warned her to “stop trying to earn extra political capital on baseless speculation.”

U.S. officials gave Spartz a two-hour classified briefing on Friday in hopes of addressing her concerns and encouraging her to limit her public criticism. She declined to discuss the briefing afterward but told The Associated Press that “healthy dialogue and deliberation is good for Congress.”

“We’re not here to please people,” she said. “It’s good to deliberate.”

Hours later, Spartz gave a Ukrainian-language interview broadcast on YouTube in which she called again for the appointment of an independent prosecutor.

“This issue should be resolved as soon as possible,” she said in the interview. “This is a huge problem for the West, so I think your president should address this issue soon.”

Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat who sits on the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, said he had seen no evidence to support allegations that Zelenskyy’s inner circle was trying to help Russia. But as the war continues, part of the long-term American strategy in Ukraine will have to include addressing waste and mismanagement of resources, he said.

“There is no war in the history of the world that is immune from corruption and people trying to take advantage of it,” Crow said. “If there are concerns raised, we will address them.”

Igor Novikov, a Kyiv-based former adviser to Zelenskyy, called many of Spartz’s claims a mix of “hearsay and urban legends and myths.” Allegations against Yermak in particular have circulated for years going back to his interactions with Trump allies who sought derogatory information against Biden’s son Hunter.

“Given that we’re in a state of war, we need to give President Zelenskyy and his team the benefit of the doubt,” Novikov said. “Until we win this war, we have to trust the president who stayed and fought with the people.”

Elevator project in Old Jerusalem leads to surprising finds

By ILAN BEN ZION

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The site of a Jewish ritual bath or mikveh, left, discovered near the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, Sunday, July 17, 2022. An excavation to build an accessible elevator from the Jewish Quarter to the Western Wall near the Temple Mount by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute of Archaeology has unearthed the mikveh that dates back to the 1st Century CE. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)


JERUSALEM (AP) — Installing an elevator doesn’t normally involve a 2,000-year plunge into an ancient city’s history. But in Jerusalem, even seemingly simple construction projects can lead to archaeological endeavors.

Archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem say they have made numerous discoveries, including an ornate first-century villa with its own ritual bath, after a project began to increase access for disabled people to Jerusalem’s Western Wall.

The villa, located footsteps from where the biblical Jewish Temples stood, was uncovered during several years of salvage excavations in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s historic Old City. Archaeologists perform salvage excavations to make a scientific study of ancient artifacts and buildings before they are removed to make way for modern construction.

Jerusalem’s Western Wall is the holiest site where Jews can pray and millions of worshipers and tourists visit it each year. But to get to the site from the adjacent Jewish Quarter, visitors typically have to descend 142 steps, or take a long detour around the city walls to one of the nearby gates.

In 2017, the Jewish Quarter Reconstruction and Development Company got the green light to begin construction of two elevators to let visitors make the 26-meter (85-foot) descent with greater ease. The location was a narrow sliver of largely undeveloped slope abutting the existing staircase on the eastern edge of the Jewish Quarter.

“The Western Wall is not a privilege, it’s elemental for a Jew or for any person from around the world who wants to come to this holy place,” said Herzl Ben Ari, CEO of the development group. “We have to enable it for everybody.”

However, like modern development projects in other ancient cities, such as Istanbul, Rome, Athens and Thessaloniki, archaeological finds slowed progress to a crawl.

“This plot of land where the elevator is going to be built remained undisturbed, giving us the great opportunity of digging through all the strata, all the layers of ancient Jerusalem,” said Michal Haber, an archaeologist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Five years into the undertaking, the archaeological work is nearing completion, but the elevators are only expected to be brought online in 2025.

During their dig, the archaeologists carefully peeled back successive layers of construction and debris that had accumulated over two millennia, over 9 meters (30 feet) in total. Historical waypoints included Ottoman pipes built into a 2,000-year-old aqueduct that supplied Jerusalem with water from springs near Bethlehem; early Islamic oil lamps; bricks stamped with the name of the 10th Legion, the Roman army that besieged, destroyed and was afterwards encamped in Jerusalem two millennia ago; and the remains of the Judean villa from the final days before the ancient Jewish Temple’s destruction in the year 70.

Archaeologist Oren Gutfeld said they were surprised to uncover traces from Jerusalem’s reconstruction as the Roman city of Aelia Capitolina in the 2nd century.

Fragments of frescoes and intricate mosaics from the villa indicated the wealth of the home’s occupants. But upon reaching bedrock, Gutfeld and Haber’s team made one last find: a private Jewish ritual bath hewn into the limestone mountainside and vaulted with enormous dressed stones.

Haber said the most significant thing about the bath, known as a mikveh, was its location overlooking the Temple esplanade.

“We are in the wealthy neighborhood of the city on the eve of its destruction,” she said.

While the elevator project is less contentious, development or archaeology excavations in Jerusalem, a city is holy to three faiths, often take on a political dimension. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of their hoped-for state, while Israel considers the entire city as its eternal, undivided capital.

Israel captured east Jerusalem, which includes the Old City and holy sites to Jews, Christians and Muslims, in the 1967 war. It later annexed east Jerusalem in a move unrecognized by most of the international community.

Officials: Starvation threat not over for Florida manatees

By CURT ANDERSON

A group of manatees are pictured in a canal where discharge from a nearby Florida Power & Light plant warms the water in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Dec. 28, 2010. Fewer manatee deaths have been recorded so far this year in Florida compared to the record-setting numbers in 2021 but wildlife officials cautioned, Wednesday, July 20, 2022, that chronic starvation remains a dire and ongoing threat to the marine mammals. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Fewer manatee deaths have been recorded so far this year in Florida compared to the record-setting numbers in 2021, but wildlife officials cautioned Wednesday that chronic starvation remains a dire and ongoing threat to the marine mammals.

Between Jan. 1 and July 15, about 631 manatee deaths have been confirmed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. That compares with 864 during the same period last year, when a record number of manatees died mainly from a lack of seagrass food, which was decimated by water pollution. The five-year average of manatee deaths in that time frame is 481.

Despite some glimmers of hope, wildlife officials said during a news conference Wednesday that manatees continue to face dwindling food options and many survivors have been severely weakened by malnutrition, which leaves them more vulnerable once cold weather sets in.

How manatees fare this summer when more food is available will determine how they survive in winter, said Martine de Wit, a veterinarian overseeing necropsies and coordinating rescues of ill manatees for the state wildlife commission.

“There is not enough high-quality food for the animals,” de Wit said, showing slides of necropsied animals with severe internal damage from starvation. “It’s going to be long lasting. It’s going to be years before you can measure the real effect.”

Manatees, the large, round-tailed mammals also known as sea cows, were already listed as a threatened species when the unprecedented die-off became apparent about a year ago. The main cause is pollution from agriculture, septic tanks, urban runoff and other sources that is killing the coastal seagrass on which the marine mammals rely.

That led to an experimental feeding program last year in which more than 202,000 pounds (91,600 kilograms) of lettuce funded mainly by donations was fed to manatees that traditionally gather during winter in the warm waters near a power plant on Florida’s east coast. Officials say they are still studying the impact of that feeding program and weighing whether to do it again as temperatures drop this winter.

“Did it have an effect? I’d like to think that it did,” said Tom Reinert, a regional director for the wildlife commission. “We’re working day in and day out to make sure we’re prepared for next winter.”

There are about 7,500 manatees in the wild in Florida, according to wildlife commission figures. They have long struggled to coexist with humans. Seagrass-killing pollution and boat strikes are now the main threats facing the beloved creatures.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently agreed in a court settlement to publish a proposed manatee critical habitat revision by September 2024. The agreement came in a long-running court case involving the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and the Save the Manatee Club.

The rule would bring enhanced federal scrutiny to projects that might affect the manatee in waterways in which the marine mammals are known to concentrate, such as the Indian River Lagoon on Florida’s east coast. In addition, the state is spending $8.5 million on a variety of manatee projects, such as restoration of seagrass and improvements in water quality.

Anyone who sees a sick or dead manatee should call the wildlife commission hotline at at 888-404-FWCC (888-404-3922).

UK weather turmoil spurs calls to adapt to climate change

By DANICA KIRKA and JILL LAWLESS

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A blaze is in the village of Wennington, east London, Tuesday, July 19, 2022. The typically temperate nation of England is the latest to be walloped by unusually hot, dry weather that has triggered wildfires from Portugal to the Balkans and led to hundreds of heat-related deaths. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)


LONDON (AP) — Britain’s record-breaking heatwave has spurred calls for the government to speed up efforts to adapt to a changing climate, especially after wildfires created the busiest day for London firefighters since bombs rained down on the city during World War II.

The country got a break Wednesday from the dry, hot weather that is gripping much of Europe as cooler air moved in from the west. Forecasters predict London will reach a high of 26 degrees Celsius (79 Fahrenheit) on Wednesday, down from the national record 40.3 C (104.4 F) set Tuesday at Coningsby in eastern England.

Even so, travel was disrupted for a third day as rail operators repaired damage caused by the heat, and firefighters continue to mop up hotspots at the scene of Tuesday’s fires.

Britain needs to prepare for similar heatwaves in the future because manmade carbon emissions have already changed the climate, said Professor Stephen Belcher, chief scientist at the Met Office, the U.K.’s national weather service. Only aggressive emissions reductions will reduce the frequency of such events, he said.

“Everything is still to play for, but we should adapt to the kind of events we saw yesterday as an occasional extreme event,” Baker told the BBC.

Climate scientists have been surprised by the speed at which temperatures in Britain have risen in recent years and the widespread area affected by this week’s event. Thirty-four locations around the U.K. on Tuesday broke the country’s previous record-high temperature of 37.8 C (100 F), set in 2019.

The weather walloped a country where few homes, schools or small businesses have air conditioning and infrastructure such as railroads, highways and airports aren’t designed to cope with such temperatures. Thirteen people, including seven teenage boys, are believed to have died trying to cool off after getting into difficulty in rivers, reservoirs and lakes.

Fifteen fire departments declared major incidents as more than 60 properties around the country were destroyed on Tuesday, Cabinet Office Minister Kit Malthouse told the House of Commons.

One of the biggest fires was in Wennington, a village on the eastern outskirts of London, where a row of houses was destroyed by flames that raced through tinder-dry fields nearby. Resident Tim Stock said he and his wife fled after the house next door caught fire and the blaze rapidly spread.

“It was like a war zone,″ he said. “Down the actual main road, all the windows had exploded out, all the roofs had caved, it was like a scene from the Blitz.”

The London Fire Brigade received 2,600 calls Tuesday, compared with the normal figure of about 350, Mayor Sadiq Khan said, adding that it was the department’s busiest day since the World War II. Despite lower temperatures on Wednesday, the fire danger remains high because hot, dry weather has parched grasslands around the city, Khan said.

“Once it catches fire it spreads incredibly fast, like wildfires like you see in movies or in fires in California or in parts of France,” Khan told the BBC.

Phil Gerigan, leader of the National Fire Chiefs Council’s resilience group, said wildfires are an emerging threat tied to climate change that is stretching the capacity of fire departments. Britain may need to expand its capacity to fight wildfires, adding more aerial tankers and helicopters, he told the BBC.

“As we look towards the future, it’s certainly something that the U.K. government and fire and rescue services need to consider,” he said. “Have we got the capability, the assets, to be able to meet what is a significantly emerging demand?”

Wildfires continue to spread destruction in other parts of Europe. Nearly 500 firefighters struggled to contain a large wildfire that threatened hillside suburbs outside Athens for a second day as fires burned across a southern swath of the continent.

A respite from the severe heat helped improve conditions in France, Spain and Portugal, countries that have battled blazes for days.

Britain’s travel network also suffered during the hot weather, with Luton Airport briefly shut down by a heat-damaged runway and trains forced to run at reduced speeds because of concerns the heat would warp rails or interrupt power supplies.

Some disruptions remained Wednesday as crews worked to repair power lines and signaling equipment damaged by fire. Passengers were advised to check before traveling and only travel when necessary.

Among those struggling was Lee Ball, 46, who was trying to travel with his wife, Libby, and 10-year-old daughter, Amelie, from Worcestershire to London to get to Brussels for an Ed Sheeran concert. Their train was cancelled with less than 30 minutes notice, so they drove to another station — and waited.

“I’ve been up since 4:30 a.m., anxious, trying to get an answer from anywhere we can,” he said.

Communication from the train companies has been “appalling,” he said.

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Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.

Report: Brazil authorities pay no mind to deforestation

By FABIANO MAISONNAVE

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Monhire Menkragnotire, of the Kayapo indigenous community, center, surveys an area where illegal loggers opened a road to enter Menkragnotire indigenous lands, on the border with the Biological Reserve Serra do Cachimbo, top, where logging is also illegal, in Altamira, Para state, Brazil on Aug. 31, 2019. Environmental criminals in the Brazilian Amazon destroyed public forests equal the size of El Salvador over the past six years, yet the Federal Police carried out only seven operations aimed at this massive loss, according to a new study released Wednesday, July 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, File)


RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Environmental criminals in the Brazilian Amazon destroyed public rainforests equal the size of El Salvador over the past six years, yet the Federal Police — the Brazilian version of the FBI — carried out only seven operations aimed at this massive loss, according to a new study.

The destruction took place in state and federal forests that are “unallocated,” meaning they do not have a designated use the way national parks and Indigenous territories do. According to official data, the Brazilian Amazon rainforest has about 580,000 square kilometers (224,000 square miles) of forests in this category, or an area almost the size of Ukraine.

As Brazil has repeatedly legalized such invasions, these public forests have become the main target for criminals who illegally seize land.

The study, from Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian think tank, analyzed 302 environmental crime raids carried out by the Federal Police in the Amazon between 2016 and 2021. Only 2% targeted people illegally seizing undesignated public lands.

The report says the lack of enforcement likely stems from the weak legal protection of these areas, in other words, the same problem that draws the illegal activity. Environmentalists have long pressed the federal government to turn these unallocated public forests into protected areas.

Since Brazil’s return to democratic rule in 1985 after two decades of military rule, most successive governments have made moves to extend the legal protection, and today about 47% of the Amazon lies within protected areas, according to official data. Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, however, has repeatedly said the country has too many protected areas and stalled this decades-long policy.

In 2016, some 2240 square kilometers (865 square miles) of unallocated public land were illegally deforested. Last year, it reached almost double that amount. Over six years, the accumulated loss has reached some 18,500 square kilometers (7,100 square miles), according to Amazon Environmental Research Institute, or IPAM, based on official data.

Deforestation is increasingly taking place on these lands in particular. In 2016, they made up 31% of all illegally-felled forest. Last year, they reached 36%.

Almost half of Brazil’s climate pollution comes from deforestation, according to an annual study from the Brazilian nonprofit network Climate Observatory. The destruction is so vast that the eastern Amazon has ceased to be a carbon sink, or absorber, for the Earth and has converted into a carbon source, according to a study published in 2021 in the journal Nature.

Igarape divides environmental crime in the Amazon into four major illicit or tainted activities: theft of public land; illegal logging; illegal mining; and deforestation linked to agriculture and cattle farming.

The enforcement operations were spread over many locations, 846, because most investigated deep into illegal supply chains. Nearly half were in protected areas, such as the Yanomami Indigenous Territory, which, despite a heavier police presence, suffers a growing invasion by thousands of illegal gold miners.

The Igarape study also pointed to an extensive “regional ecosystem of crime,” since the police operations took place in 24 of Brazil’s 27 states plus 8 cities in neighboring countries. “Environmental crime stems from illicit economies that access consumer markets and financing outside the Amazon,” the report says.

The Federal Police didn’t respond to an Associated Press email seeking comment about its strategy in the Amazon.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

How canine heart disease was tied to grain-free dog food

HELEN SANTORO

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Dog food is shown in a pet store in Westfield, Ind., Tuesday, July 19, 2022. In 2018, the FDA began investigating whether the increasing popularity of grain-free dog foods had led to a sudden rise in a potentially fatal heart disease in dogs. Four years later, the FDA has reached no conclusion, but the publicity surrounding the issue has shrunk the once-promising market for grain-free dog foods. 

(AP Photo/Michael Conroy)


In 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, acting on input from a group of veterinary researchers, began investigating whether the increasing popularity of grain-free dog foods had led to a sudden rise in a potentially fatal heart disease in dogs, dilated cardiomyopathy.

Four years later, the FDA has found no firm link between diet and dilated cardiomyopathy. Nor has it rejected such a link, and research is ongoing. Publicity surrounding this issue, nevertheless, has shrunk the once-promising market for grain-free dog foods.

Furthermore, a tangled web of industry funding and interests appears to have influenced the origin, data collection, and course of the FDA study, according to internal FDA records.

A six-month investigation by 100Reporters has found that veterinarians who prompted the FDA to consider diet have financial and other ties to the leading sellers of grain-inclusive pet foods. Additionally, agency records show that for the initial study, some vets were instructed to submit only dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) cases that implicated grain-free, “exotic” or “boutique” pet foods. Suppliers of ingredients used in grain-free dog foods have also exerted pressure on the FDA to protect their market.

Consequently, the conversation around DCM and grain-free food is deeply divided, with each side claiming the other is prioritizing industry relationships over scientific integrity and the lives of pets.

“This became such an emotional issue,” said Dana Brooks, CEO of the Pet Food Institute, whose members produce most pet foods in the US. “We’re scrambling to try to even determine what’s going on.”

CAUSE FOR CONCERN

Grain-free pet diets became popular in the early 2000s, relying heavily on pulses — seeds from legume plants including peas, beans and lentils. By 2019, grain-free kibble represented 43 percent of dry pet foods sold.

Until 2017, the FDA saw one to three reports of DCM annually. But between January 1 and July 10, 2018, it received 25 cases. Seven reports came from a single source, animal nutritionist Lisa Freeman from Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, an FDA spokesperson said. FDA records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, however, indicate those reports may not have been fully representative of cases seen at the Tufts clinic.

In a June 2018 email to FDA veterinary medical officer Jennifer Jones, Freeman attached a document instructing vets to report cases to the FDA, “If patient is eating any diet besides those made by well-known, reputable companies or if eating a boutique, exotic ingredient, or grain-free (BEG) diet.”

When asked if this could be perceived as cherry-picking data that would shape the inquiry, Freeman stated through Tufts media relations: “The protocol in that email was developed for and intended to help veterinary cardiologists in the early stages of the investigation into potential associations between diet and dilated cardiomyopathy.”

“I shared the protocol with the FDA to inform them of what our clinical recommendations for patients were at that time,” Freeman wrote, noting they’re “continuing to study” any diet with ingredients linked to DCM “regardless of manufacturer.”

In an email, an FDA spokesperson wrote, “The FDA has never requested that DCM cases reported to the agency be limited to certain diet types. We welcome all DCM reports with a suspected link to food, regardless of the type of diet.”

According to PubMed.gov, Freeman has received funding from leading sellers of grain-inclusive foods, including Nestle Purina Petcare, Hill’s Pet Nutrition, and Mars Petcare, since 2002. Her recent conflict-of-interest declarations state: “In the last 3 years, Dr. Freeman has received research funding from, given sponsored lectures for, and/or provided professional services to Aratana Therapeutics, Elanco, Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Nestlé Purina PetCare, P&G Pet Care (now Mars), and Royal Canin.”

Industry funding is common in animal nutrition science. Freeman said she stands behind her research and has “ transparently disclosed the sources of funding for the work I conduct on this topic.”

Two veterinary cardiologists—Darcy Adin from the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine and Joshua Stern from the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine—also collaborated with the FDA.

Emails from a public records request indicate that in April 2018, Jones spoke with Freeman, Stern and Adin about grain-free dog foods and DCM and requested spreadsheets of their clinical case data.

Adin has been involved in studies funded by Purina since 2018 and, since 2017, by the Morris Animal Foundation, an animal health charity created by the founder of Hill’s and chaired by a Hill’s employee.

University of Florida’s public relations said neither Adin nor the university received direct financial support from the companies for these studies.

Stern has authored studies funded by the Morris Animal Foundation since 2011, and currently receives funding from the foundation.

“I completely understand conflict-of-interest concerns with people being funded by the pet food industry,” Stern said. “It’s hard to find a veterinary nutritionist that hasn’t done research for pet food companies.”

Purina, Hill’s and Mars didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

In July 2018, the FDA announced its investigation, noting many of the 25 dogs diagnosed lacked a genetic predisposition to DCM. The common thread, it said, appeared to be a grain-free diet.

A year later, the FDA took the unusual step of naming 16 dog foods, nearly all grain-free, that appeared most frequently in their DCM case reports. “We’ve never seen anything like that before without a certainty of the cause,” said Brooks.

Joseph Bartges, professor of animal nutrition at the University of Georgia, wasn’t surprised, noting the FDA flagged grain-free food early on. “When you only look for what you want to see, you only see what you look for,” Bartges said. By July 2020, reports of DCM numbered 1,100 — likely resulting from the FDA encouraging people to report the disease,” said Brooks.

INFLUENTIAL INDUSTRY

Suppliers of ingredients for grain-free foods, in turn, marshaled forces to protect their market share.

In its 2019 annual report, the USA Dry Pea & Lentil Council said it “convinced the FDA to clarify their language about their concerns and minimize the damage to the industry.”

In a 2019 letter to FDA officials, Sen. Jon Tester from Montana — a principal growing region for pulses— complained the agency’s “unsubstantiated warning” had hurt pulse farmers. The following year, seven senators signed another letter to the FDA flagging potential “bias about causation of this disease.”

The FDA has continuously stated that DCM involves multiple factors. Shortly after that letter, Steven Solomon, director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), emphasized this point, describing DCM as “a scientifically complex, multifaceted issue,” adding that “we . . . currently do not view this as a regulatory issue.”

An FDA spokesperson wrote that while it met with stakeholders, “Ultimately, all FDA decisions and work are guided by science, data, and our public health mission.”

Regardless of the investigation’s ultimate findings, sales of grain-free dry dog foods have fallen since June 2018 and decreased by $60 million from 2021 to 2022. Meanwhile, grain-inclusive sales spiked in 2019 and rose by $700 million from 2020 to 2021.

Getting an answer about DCM will be difficult thanks to the complexity of the science and industry influence, said Marion Nestle, author of Pet Food Politics. “They’re all trying to protect their market share.”

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This article is an abridged version of an investigation produced by 100Reporters, a nonprofit investigative news organization, with financial support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism and legal guidance from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Election of unpopular Sri Lankan PM invites more turmoil

By KRISHAN FRANCIS

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Protesters shout slogans demanding elected president Ranil Wickremesinghe step down during a protest at the presidential secretariat premise in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Wednesday, July 20, 2022. Sri Lanka's prime minister was elected president Wednesday by lawmakers who opted for a seasoned, veteran leader to lead the country out of economic collapse, despite widespread public opposition.

(AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lankan lawmakers on Wednesday elected the unpopular prime minister as their new president, a choice that risked reigniting turmoil in the South Asian nation reeling from economic collapse and months of round-the-clock protests.

The crisis has already forced out one leader, and a few hundred protesters quickly gathered after the vote to express their outrage that Ranil Wickremesinghe — a six-time prime minister whom they see as part of the problematic political establishment — would stay in power.

While the choice invited more protests, lawmakers apparently considered Wickremesinghe a safe pair of hands, a politician with deep experience who could lead Sri Lanka out of the crisis. He has spent 45 years in Parliament and led recent talks seeking a bailout for the bankrupt island nation.

Sri Lankans have taken to the street for months to demand their top leaders step down as the country spiraled into economic chaos that left its 22 million people struggling with shortages of essentials, including medicine, fuel and food. After demonstrators stormed the presidential palace and several other government buildings last week, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled and then resigned.

Much of the protesters’ ire is focused on Rajapaksa and his family’s political dynasty, which ruled Sri Lanka for most of the past two decades. But many also blame Wickremesinghe for protecting Rajapaksa. During demonstrations last week, crowds set his personal residence on fire and occupied his office.

Wednesday’s vote means Wickremesinghe — who was also Rajapaksa’s finance minister and became acting president after the leader fled — will finish the presidential term ending in 2024. He can now also appoint a new prime minister.

“I need not tell you what state our country is in,” Wickremesinghe, 73, told fellow lawmakers after his victory was announced. “People are not expecting the old politics from us. They expect us to work together.”

He pleaded for the country to move on: “Now that the election is over, we have to end this division.”

But protesters flocked to the presidential residence instead, chanting, “Ranil, go home.”


(AP video/Rishi Lekhi)

“We are very sad, very disappointed with the 225 parliament members who we elected to speak for us, which they have not done,” said Visaka Jayawware, a performance artist in the crowd. “We will keep fighting for the people of Sri Lanka. We have to ask for a general election.”

Wickremesinghe has wide experience in diplomatic and international affairs and oversaw the bailout talks with the International Monetary Fund.

But many voters view him with suspicion since he was appointed prime minister by Rajapaksa in May, in hopes he would restore stability.

The protesters accuse Rajapaksa and his powerful family of siphoning money from government coffers and of hastening the country’s collapse by mismanaging the economy. The family has denied the corruption allegations, but the former president acknowledged that some of his policies contributed to Sri Lanka’s meltdown.

“The struggle will continue until our demands are met. Wickremesinghe “doesn’t have a mandate to rule the country,” said Nemel Jayaweera, a human resources professional.

 “We will oppose him.”

Still, the ruling party’s majority in Parliament swept Wickremesinghe to victory with 134 votes. Populist Dullas Alahapperuma, a longtime ally of Rajapaksa and also a minister in his government, secured 82 votes. A Marxist candidate netted three votes.

The vote, shown on national television, was a decorous, solemn affair. While the balloting was secret, as the results were announced, lawmakers thumped their tables in support of their candidates.

After the vote, some supporters celebrated Wickremesinghe’s win in the streets. He will be sworn in Thursday.

Only a few lawmakers had publicly said they would vote for Wickremesinghe given the widespread hostility against him. But dozens loyal to Rajapaksa had been expected to back him because he had assured them he would severely punish protesters who burned politicians’ homes in the unrest.

On Monday, in his role as acting president, Wickremesinghe declared a state of emergency that gave him broad authority to act in the interest of public security and order. Authorities can carry out searches and detain people, and Wickremesinghe can also change or suspend any law.

The political turmoil in Sri Lanka has only worsened the economic disaster. But Wickremesinghe said Monday that negotiations with the IMF were drawing close to a conclusion, and talks on help from other countries had also progressed. He also said the government has taken steps to resolve shortages of fuel and cooking gas.

Hours before Wednesday’s vote, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told financial magazine Nikkei Asia that the organization hoped to complete the rescue talks “as quickly as possible.”

As prime minister, Wickremesinghe delivered weekly addresses in Parliament cautioning that the path out of the crisis would be difficult, while also pledging to overhaul a government that increasingly has concentrated power under the presidency.

Presidents in Sri Lanka are normally elected by the public. The responsibility falls to Parliament only if the presidency becomes vacant before the term officially ends.

That has happened only once before in Sri Lanka, in 1993, when then-Prime Minister Dingiri Banda Wijetunga was chosen by Parliament uncontested after former President Ranasinghe Premadasa, father of the current opposition leader, was assassinated.

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Associated Press writer Bharatha Mallawarachi contributed to this report.

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Find more of AP’s Sri Lanka coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/sri-lanka

Rapinoe, King urge freedom for Brittney Griner at The ESPYS

By BETH HARRIS

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NWSL player Megan Rapinoe, of OL Reign, accepts the award for best play at the ESPY Awards on Wednesday, July 20, 2022, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark Terrill)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Soccer player Megan Rapinoe admonished her fellow athletes for not doing enough to speak out and encouraged them to support detained WNBA star Brittney Griner at The ESPYs on Wednesday night.

Griner was arrested in Russia in February after customs officials said they found vape canisters containing cannabis oil in her luggage. She faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted on charges of transporting drugs.

“For me, the most striking thing is that BG’s not here. BG deserves to be free, she’s being held as a political prisoner, obviously,” Rapinoe said while accepting a trophy for best play at the show honoring the past year’s top athletes and moments in sports.

“Like what are we doing here dressed up like we are when our sister is detained abroad? We haven’t done enough, none of us. We can do more, we can support her more, and just let her know that we love her so much.”

“First, bring BG home. Gotta do that,” tennis great Billie Jean King said.

Griner has pleaded guilty in court and acknowledged possessing the canisters but said she had no criminal intent.

Rapinoe urged her fellow competitors to keep Griner’s face and name on social media.

“Every time we say it in interviews, it puts pressure on everybody,” she said. “It puts pressure on the administration, it puts pressure on Russia, it puts pressure on Putin, it puts pressure on everyone, and it lets BG know also above everything that we love her and that we miss her and that we’re thinking about her all the time.”

NBA Finals MVP Stephen Curry hosted the show and joined WNBA players Nneka Ogwumike and Skylar Diggins-Smith in calling attention to Griner’s plight.

“It’s been 153 nights now that BG has been wrongfully detained thousands of miles away from home, away from her family, away from her friends, away from her team,” Diggins-Smith said. “All throughout that time, we’ve kept her in our thoughts and in our hearts even though we know that ain’t nearly enough to bring her home, y’all.”

Wearing her Phoenix Mercury jersey under his track suit, Curry noted the effort being made to free Griner.

“But as we hope for the best, we urge the entire global sports community to continue to stay energized on her behalf,” he said. “She’s one of us, the team of athletes in this room tonight and all over the world. A team that has nothing to do with politics or global conflict.”

They were applauded by Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, who was in the audience at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

Curry picked up a trophy, too, for best record-breaking performance, having set the mark for most 3-pointers made in league history. He also shared the best team award with the NBA champion Golden State Warriors.

Los Angeles Angels two-way star Shohei Ohtani won best athlete in men’s sports.

“It’s an honor to be in the same category as all of you. You are the best at what you do,” the Japanese player said, speaking in English via videotape. “Have a wonderful everything and enjoy your afterparties.”

Olympic swimming champion Katie Ledecky won best athlete in women’s sports.

Ledecky earned two golds and two silvers at the Tokyo Games last year, giving her 10 career Olympic medals. She received her trophy from Maybelle Blair, the 95-year-old who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

“I represent one of the few sports that is also a really important life skill, so I want to encourage all the parents here, anyone watching, to make sure your kids learn how to swim,” Ledecky said. “Our planet is 70% water, so it’s very important.”

Former heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko was honored with the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage, having impacted the world beyond sports. Klitschko, mayor of embattled Kyiv, Ukraine, since 2014, wasn’t present. He appeared in a pre-taped video.

King led off a tribute to the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the federal legislation that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools that receive government funding.

She was joined by Lisa Leslie, Brandi Chastain, Chloe Kim, Allyson Felix, Aly Raisman and Rapinoe, among others. They spoke against a background of black-and-white photos showing women athletes in action, on the field or in the streets advocating for gender equality. Their comments were interspersed with country singer Mickey Guyton performing her songs “What Are You Gonna Tell Her?” and “Remember Her Name.”


The ESPYS were criticized by South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley for not inviting consensus player of the year Aliyah Boston to the show. Boston had hoped to attend and was disappointed not to be asked. She was issued a last-minute invitation but declined it.

ESPN said COVID-19 concerns and a smaller venue forced organizers to prioritize invitees to the show. Boston was nominated in a non-televised category that was handed out a night earlier. She lost to Oklahoma softball star Jocelyn Alo, who took part in the Title IX tribute.

ESPN college basketball broadcaster Dick Vitale received the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance. The 83-year-old has undergone multiple melanoma surgeries and six months of chemotherapy for lymphoma over the last year. In March, he said he was cancer free.

Vitale dismissed messages on the teleprompter urging him to conclude his remarks, which stretched to 20 minutes.

“I’m gonna wrap up in about three minutes,” he said in a raspy voice. “Jimmy’s dream was to beat cancer. We must do it because it doesn’t discriminate. It comes after all.”

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EXPLAINER: Foot-and-mouth disease and the efforts to stop it

By VICTORIA MILKO

today

1 of 3

A man walks past cows he sells ahead of the Eid al-Adha holiday under a flyover in Jakarta, Indonesia on July 8, 2022. Thousands of cattle are covered in blisters from highly infectious foot-and-mouth disease in Indonesia, sounding the alarm for the country, its Southeast Asian neighbors and Australia. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim)


JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Thousands of cattle are covered in blisters from highly infectious foot-and-mouth disease in Indonesia, sounding the alarm for the country, its Southeast Asian neighbors and Australia. The virus found in two provinces in May has now infected several hundred-thousand animals across multiple provinces, including the popular tourist destination of Bali.

Indonesia is now taking measures to curb the spread of the disease. Australia has offered assistance in hopes of preventing the disease and its economic and environmental consequences from crossing its borders.

Here’s a look at the disease and what’s happening in Indonesia.

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WHAT IS FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE?

Foot-and-mouth disease is caused by a virus that infects cattle, sheep, goats, swine and other cloven-hoofed animals. While death rates are typically low, the disease can make animals ill with fever, decreased appetite, excessive drooling, blisters and other symptoms.

The disease was once found worldwide but has since been erased from some regions, including western Europe and North America. Parts of Southeast Asia, such as Malaysia and Thailand, have had regular outbreaks, but Indonesia until now had been free from the disease since 1986.

The ongoing outbreak is concentrated in dairy and beef cattle, but the spread to other susceptible animals can’t be ruled out.

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HOW DOES IT SPREAD?

The virus spreads easily through contact and airborne transmission and can quickly infect entire herds. People can spread the disease though things like farming equipment, shoes, clothing, vehicle tires and more that have come in contact with the virus. Though it’s considered rare, humans can also carry the virus in their nose for short periods of time, infecting animals, said Michael Ward, chair of the Veterinary Public Health & Food Safety at the University of Sydney.

Livestock feed and animal products such as meat and hides can also carry and spread the virus.

More than 300,000 livestock in Indonesia had foot-and-mouth disease by the first week of July. In the same month, the Eid al-Adha festival — a Muslim holiday marked with ritual animal sacrifice — resulted in large movement of animals around the country, which is considered to have accelerated the spread of the disease.

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WHY ARE OFFICIALS WORRIED?

Because it is so easily spread, the virus can be incredibly difficult to get rid of once there is an outbreak. In poorer countries, sick animals affect people’s access to food. In middle-income and richer countries, the disease affects the livestock trade and related industries. One paper estimated that foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks can cost billions of dollars, highlighting the damage to governments and farmers.

Australia, which is currently free of foot-and-mouth disease, has expressed particular worry about the spread from Indonesia. The resort island of Bali is a popular tourist destination for Australians and has confirmed cases of the disease.

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WHAT IS BEING DONE TO COMBAT THE OUTBREAK?
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Indonesia is using animal testing, vaccination, treatment, and conditional slaughter to try to curb the outbreak. The Ministry of Agriculture launched a vaccination program for livestock in mid-June, prioritizing doses for healthy animals at high risk of infection, such as those at crowded places such as livestock breeding centers, community-owned dairy farms, dairy cooperatives, and beef cattle farms.

The Australian government has offered financial and vaccine assistance for Indonesia’s response to the recent outbreak. The vaccination program is likely to focus on support for the small-holder farm sector, which accounts for 90% of Indonesia’s cattle industry.

In Australia, the government announced it would install disinfectant mats at airports that are intended to capture potentially contaminated dirt from the shoes of those returning from overseas. Government officials also promised more stringent biosecurity checks, such as sniffing detector dogs, for those returning from overseas.

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CAN PEOPLE GET FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE?

No. Foot-and-mouth disease is often confused with hand, foot and mouth disease, which is caused by a different virus and mostly infects young children. People do not get the animal disease, and animals do not get the human disease, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.